The Art of the Video Recap

Does your church need a recap video? "Even for people that were there, it’s nice to hear kind of a summary of everything that was said in the previous week’s message,” says Dallas Thiele, creative services director at Calvary Church of Naperville,...

"Last week on…” How many times have you heard a television show begin that way? What follows is a short review of last episode that is called a recap, which is short for recapitulation. We've all seen it dozens of times but how many times have you experienced a recap video in church? If you visit Calvary Church of Naperville, Illinois you will see that just about every week. Their church tech team began creating a weekly recap video about a year ago.

The church has a 2,700 seat hall and is located about 35 miles east of the heart of Chicago. Dallas Thiele is Calvary's creative services director and he tells us why it made so much sense to their team. “We know our congregants aren't here every week, so we want to make sure that is some way that they can catch up. And, even for people that were there, it's nice to hear kind of a summary of everything that was said in the previous week's message.” Calvary's pastors primarily teach sermon series and, with the exception of the first week's message, they find it valuable to begin with this video review.

Thiele tells us that the process is not easy to do. “They can be anywhere from an eight-hour to a 16-hour project, depending on the level of complexity. From getting the story right to making the rest of it look good with B roll or graphics or whatever we're doing for that particular series” It requires diligent work from one of the staff or volunteer editors.

Thiele walks us through the process, that begins on Monday morning by watching a recording of the Sunday message. The church has multiple cameras that are used for the three projection screens. “We carefully listen to the entire message and pull quotes as we're watching to it.” He continues, “Then you end up with all these different quotes, and then we try to stitch together a cohesive story that makes sense using those quotes. We try to get it down to just around a minute.” The goal it to make sure to keep the main theme of the message is clear, but keep it a manageable size.

Once they get the quotes pieced together, they will send out an audio file to the pastoral staff for approval. The goal is for this audio file to be sent out by the end of the day on Monday, so everyone has a chance to review. It is critical that the staff agrees with the editor's highlights, especially the pastor who was teaching that day. Thiele tells us that making it a complete story is the key. “Sometimes we will even make them with something from the end of the message and switch it with something from the beginning. Just so the story makes sense.”

Next, Thiele says, the editor has to clean it up, “We'll cover up the edits, because obviously you have to chop some stuff out.” To cover, they use footage from another camera that is assigned to take audience shots. “We'll show people who are reading along with the scriptures in their Bible. A lot of people are taking notes. We'll use shots of people that are just kind of sitting there nodding, and agreeing.” It helps the video look good but also gives it a polished, faster paced look.

The goal is to have the completed project, or at least a first edit done, by Wednesday or Thursday of each week. Once again, there is always an approval process by the pastoral team. This time, the editors send out a video using Wipster. ( ) The staff gets to comment and then final changes are made. They even have one staff member in the loop who is responsible to check spelling on all the graphics. Thiele tells us that typically the recap video will go through three to eight revisions before it is finalized. Ideally, everything is loaded into the church’s server by Friday for the weekend services.

Thiele tells us that the philosophy behind all of their videos, including the recap videos is to enhance the church's message. “The whole point every weekend is just to present the Gospel. However that is done, we want to make sure that it's done with quality and with excellence and that people receive it well. We don't want to take valuable time up from our congregants who already have incredibly busy lives already. So we evaluate, everything we do from a standpoint of; ‘Is this necessary?' and ‘Is this actually going to help them?'” He says that though this filter they decide how to enhance their service. They feel a video recap is exactly what they need.

Does your church need a recap video? It might make sense. Calvary experimented with it at first and got lots of feedback. Overall, it was very well received and, although it means a lot of work, it has become valuable to this high-tech church.